


seeds of a sallow earth

by faorism



Category: Kingdom Hearts, Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 18:49:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12394023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faorism/pseuds/faorism
Summary: As the world's heart learns that day, magic rests even in the smallest puddles found in the wet gore of blood and flesh and broken bone near turned dust. (In which Reaper is Gabriel Reyes' Nobody.)





	seeds of a sallow earth

**Author's Note:**

> a quick drabble inspired by [a post by gabrielreyesofsunshine](http://gabrielreyesofsunshine.tumblr.com/post/166444260988/reaper-is-gabriel-reyes-nobody) regarding reaper’s doomcore concept art designs. thank you, jeff, for blessing us with what could have been. fic title is from a song by the same name by [alder & ash](https://youtu.be/cxvaPQ62cvI).

There are worlds upon worlds distant from the epicenter of the middling war that never see inky beasts or silky wisps slink through their air. There are worlds upon worlds that no one comes to collect and no one comes to protect; it's not worth the bother to root out something that can't be found. There are worlds that never know of keyblades and magic. Worlds' hearts that might've been safe from the darkness should the boy and his band have failed. Mice rarely speak in these places.

Their world should've been safe, so far that it is from the castle that couldn't be in a city that never was.

But then all of this world's magicks burst nearly overnight. They called it "omnic" and "particle" and "hard light," each reservoir of potential named differently depending on who held the patent. But all leeched from the same place. All from the heart of the world.

And the thing with magic is, it can breathe thought into a new kind of people given life where before there was only metal and circuit boards. Magic can build a Utopaea and destroy a Rio, should you let it. Magic can do so many things because magic is beautiful. Is horror. Is peace. Is surrender. Is the question of morality. Is quiet. Huge. Still. Magic is an utterly utterly neutral affair, a clear water to reflect all the skies above it and all the sand and rock beneath its troubled surface.

In their world, the water seeped into the gears of capitalist machines and bureaucratic engines and the nettles of their greed.

They stirred a darkness that shouldn't be.

And so it stirred and stirred until during the rocking climax of a fight—a betrayal—a misunderstanding—a witchhunt, what stutters through the rubble is a monster. Born too far from that singular lunar epicenter, it cannot feed and feed from the logic that gives rise to true shadows and true unversed and true nobodies and true everything-that-the-keyblade-masters-fight.

But as the world's heart learns that day, magic rests even in the smallest puddles found in the wet gore of blood and flesh and broken bone near turned dust.

It does not need the rules proposed by a crackpot team of researchers to exist. It… _he_ simply does.

He remembers being Gabriel in a way Reaper shouldn't remember his first self. Remembers the man's anger and laughter, pride and humility, love and patience. Remembers how he led an army. Remembers how he later pushed a team that hardly bowed to order, even if a wink of obedience kept them from rotting the rest of their days in prison. He tries to remember what the man knew of magic or "science" science or whatever might give reason for his new existence. Engineering notes and mal de ojo, bookbags never put on the floor and weapon blueprints, black moths shooed from the house, tall candles bought from the liquor store, blathering from a balding high school physics teacher, just shot guns warm in the hand… 

Gabriel knew a lot of things, a lot of horrible secret things like how any body can be pushed to its limit… It's a twisting thing, how deep and ugly and hopeful Gabriel's knowledge goes. None of it is a direct explanation for Reaper but maybe this depth (above all else) is the reason Reaper stands upon the world instead of buried in its ground.

But as much as Gabriel knew, Reaper knows things Gabriel did not.

Reaper knows what it's like to die as a man.

Reaper knows what it's like to come into existence as a nightmare of inky and wispy trails.

There are more things that Reaper must come to know. Like why did this happen to him? How? What of the suspicions he brought to Morrison are true? Who can be punished for the way the world has broken as of late? What can he get out of it? …There are so many questions. And yes, Reaper wonders, sometimes, what Gabriel would have thought of him and his loyalties in pursuit of knowledge. But as with all others like and unlike him, the ones who found each other in the Organization, Reaper will have his answers.

No matter what.

 

 

 

There are distant worlds upon worlds that never see inky beasts or silky wisps slink through their air. Their world is not so lucky as it finds but one of these horrors, whose body forms and reforms itself into a truth his world can just come to understand. A darkness stirs.

 

**Author's Note:**

> ya can catch me at my [personal tumblr](http://faorism.tumblr.com) or my [fanwork one](http://faorismwork.tumblr.com).


End file.
